Der Tod des Freischütz
by Urwen
Summary: Living human, vampire pale, hear der Freischütz' dreadful tale. (Prose-poetry. MilleniumManga-based so much German, apologies.)


Ich bin der Jäger  
Und dieses ist mein Lied.  
  
I am the Hunter  
And this is my song.

There was a girl. Let us call her Agatha, for irony's sake. Chaste and fair.  
Hear my tale and despair.  
  
Perhaps I knew her well. Perhaps we grew up in the same village. Perhaps we shared our first loves with sweet boys, the sons of woodcutters. Perhaps we grew tired of the woods and the birds and the log huts and the Boheminanity. Perhaps her sweetheart heard there was a war and ran away to join it. Perhaps she followed, sure she would never see him again, otherwise. Perhaps I followed, a dark shadow behind her. Perhaps she joined the war. Perhaps I did too. Perhaps we tried to join up, perhaps they laughed and told us we should return home and cook dinner for our husbands.  
  
Perhaps we found a Kampfgruppe that would take us.  
  
Holocaust. You know this word? What do you think it means? It means sacrifice. Six Million Sacrificed. To Thule, Satan, Samiel. To the Glorious Thousand Year Reich. I spilled her blood. A blood sacrifice, Holocaust. No bridal wreath cast aside that bullet, for the bridegroom wore the broken cross, the broken iron cross. And he was dead, dead long ago on the field of battle.  
  
Immer näher, liebe Leutchen!  
Wollt ihr mich im Kranze sehn?  
On my crown a cross is broken,  
Forest be my bower and grave.  
  
(Hier im ird'schen Jammerthal)  
Ich jage.  
  
(Here in this Earthly Vale of Tears)  
I am hunting  
  
Have you seen the party marching?  
Fit to conquer all the earth.  
Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer  
One People and One Birth  
  
Eyes of blue and fair complexion,  
Answer to a maiden's prayer.  
Agents of dark and doom enslave him.  
Do not weep and do not fear  
  
Für  
Ich hatt' einen Kameraden,  
Einen bessern findst du nit.  
Die Trommel schlug zum Streite,  
Sie ging an meiner Seite  
In gleichem Schritt und Tritt.  
In gleichem Schritt und Tritt.  
  
(Silence! The fool's not yet to know…)  
I am hunting  
  
Three more years? Caspar was a fool. I did not settle for so little. A life for three more years. For sixty more years. A life for an eternity. An eternity of hunting.  
  
Der Hölle Netz hat mich umgarnt.  
  
In the deep Bohemian Bavarian forests, in the black maw of the Wolf's Gorge, the price I paid as I ate her heart and drank her blood to join my Kampfgruppe and fight the war.  
  
O diese Sonne  
Furchtbar steigt sie mir empor.  
Never more to shine on her face.  
  
Jetzt auf! In Bergen und Klüften  
Tobt morgen der freudige Krieg!  
  
Onward, on to Engelland, home to hanging, hills and dark satanic mills. Forests gone, wolves all slain. Blow the horns, dress in red, unleash the hounds and wake Wotan's Wild Wailing Hunt.  
  
Jawohl, Krieg und immer Krieg  
Der Jäge kommt mit Feuer und Krieg  
  
(Schweig, damit dich niemand warnt)  
Ich jage.  
  
(Silence, let no-one him warn.) I am hunting.  
  
I thought at first that we were the oldest things in the darkness, the ultimate horror. Mutter says to Kinder 'Beware of the Dark Things that Wait in the Woods'. The Wild and the Werewolves and the Wailing Winding White Wyrm.  
  
I was wrong.  
  
There are older, darker things. Samiel knows the forest. The way beyond the forest. The land across the forest. Across the forest, beyond the gorge, across the mountains, he keeps his castle.  
  
And now he comes, screaming across the sky on an iron horse, trailing air and fire and darkness behind him. He has come to fetch me.  
  
Wie nahte mir der Schlummer,  
Bevor ich ihn gesehn?  
I am afraid, his fiery trail,  
Is driving me insane.  
  
But no, I will not quiver, quail and quake, I will not hide, or beg for three years more, only three years more. I will stand, on this boat the size of a village, stand in the open beneath the sun and watch the clouds torn apart, eviscerated and spilling thunder, a great gash giving birth to a disintegrating child of flame and night, giving birth to him as surely no woman could.  
  
Come for me Samiel, come for me, I am waiting, waiting for you to face my bullets, to impale me on my own sword, pierce me with my own spear. To make known to me the reason for your title in penetrative motion.  
  
Triumph. Triumph. Triumph. Die Rache gelingt.  
Throw me into the Wild Werewolves Gorge.  
Take me.  
Avenge the girl. Avenge the girl I once was.  
Avenge me.


End file.
